We are an organization dedicated to raising awareness about the history, culture and true lives of Romani people worldwide.
We confront racism and oppression wherever we encounter it.
We try to make connections with all the "isms" that make up western culture.

On May 16th, 1944 four thousand Roma imprisoned in the “zigeunerlager” in
Auschwitz decided to stand up to their murderers who according to programme
had come to get them to lead them to the gas chambers.

The most powerful and well-organized
machine of oppression and death of all time found itself before human beings
reduced to a pitiful state – swarms of children all skin and bone and barefoot
women and men.

It wasn’t only the men who decided not to bow their heads to
these butchers in uniform; the scrawny hands of children and women picked
up stones, bricks, iron rods and rudimentary blades and all together the Roma of
Auschwitz cried

“No! We will not give you our children to force through your
chimneys. Your doctors have tortured so many of them already while experimenting
their monstrous science.

The children’s screams rose high into the air, higher
than the dense smoke issueing from the crematoriums, higher than our prayers.
You will not wipe out our families after you have already taken away the
precious gifts of freedom and dignity. We will not leave to your grasping hands,
to your wicked hearts and your inhuman hatred the beauty of our lives, the
sanctity of the love that unites our families in a poor yet proud
people”.

The
mothers held their younger children tightly to their chests as they fought; the
young children defended the “zigeunerlager” until they were covered in blood,
looking like the spirits of revenge in legends; dark-skinned arms brandished
primitive weapons with tireless energy, until the SS retreated, astonished at
the sight of their heroism, their superhuman courage as they faced the bullets
and bayonets with their bare skin.

The SS retreated, taking with them
many German corpses. Only on August 2nd, 1944 were the Nazis able to dispose of
the “zigeunerlager” - after they’d left the Roma imprisoned in the
“death factory” close to death by reducing their food ration to a minimum. 2,897
Roma heroes were assassinated in the gas chambers of Birkenau on one night
alone.

Today, May
16th, 2008, we are faced with the heirs of Hitler’s butchers.

The instigators of
this new genocide are the men and women we see every day in the newspapers and
on TV, smiling, full of themselves, fresh from face lifts and make-up sessions,
their sneering mouths full of words that sound like “Legality”, “Justice”,
“Safety”, but which really mean “Persecution”, “Racism” and “Death”.

We see
them every day and they no longer wear party colours because they are united by
hatred. They have no respect for anything: either for human life, or human
rights, for the universal laws or the new Europe that speaks out against
prejudice.

They have encouraged violent acts and pogroms all over Italy,
deceiving the Italian people with racist lies and fomenting xenophobic violence.

We who still see the light of human rights won’t be able to stop them, we who
are all Roma now, we who want to be Roma because we want to be just, we will not
be able to stop them if we do not decide right now to inherit the pride of
the Auschwitz gypsies - if we do not decide to line up at the side of the
persecuted families, and defy the authorities who no longer represent
anything, the uniforms that no longer represent anything, the high-ranking state
officials who have betrayed all values, who have no right to express themselves
in the name of a people, of a civilization, of a humanity that – among so much
horror – wrote up a text that was a commitment to build a better future for
everyone: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

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FLAG OF THE ROMA

LOLO DIKLO : RrOMANI AGAINST RACISM

Lolo Diklo : Rromani Against Racism is an organization dedicated to providing information about the true situation of the Romani (Gypsies) in the world today. We are committed to confronting racism and oppression wherever it is found.

BACKGROUND

The Romani are a people who are not very well known. We are an ethnic group of people originally from India. We left India and arrived in Europe sometime in the 1300's. There are many theories as to why we left India. This is the work of academics, and we have some. Most Romani are more concerned about daily survival to worry about documentation of our past. We know who we are.

What is known about the Romani is, for the most part, stereotypically based. We are portrayed as romantic, carefree wonderers or child stealers, pick pockets and beggers.

Today the Romani of Europe face the same discrimination they have faced for centuries.